Christine and Dermot combined to deliver the best Room To Improve yet as they wrestled with her two-bed terrace in Clontarf
The Great Stand Up To Cancer Bake Off Channel 4, Tuesday The Oscars Sky Cinema, Monday Room To Improve RTÉ One, Sunday
IT’S funny how some shows just never are on your radar. Despite the fact that 13million people in Ireland and the UK have often sat down to watch individual episodes, I never actually have seen even five minutes of The Great British Bake Off. I’m not averse to baking per se. Like most kids, watched my mother hard at work when I was a child (she used to made these shortbreads topped with a layer of meringue, apricot jam and flaked almonds and it actually tasted like a personal gift from God, and Victoria sponge that, when prodded, sprang back into place like a memory foam mattress), and I often was rewarded with the scrapings of the dough bowl.
I’ve baked too. Every year, I make a Christmas cake and a pudding, and I used to occasionally make the odd rhubarb tart, or profiteroles and the like, but life got in the way.
It wasn’t entirely a surprise when I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and, except for the Christmas requirements and the occasional brown loaf, I never bake at all anymore.
Maybe that’s why Bake Off never has held much appeal for me, though its cultural reach is such that I know all about its innuendo, all those references to moistness and soggy bottoms, that apparently are hilarious to a certain cohort.
I did, however, sit down on Tuesday to watch the first of a special series with celebrities in aid of the Stand Up To Cancer charity and, for the first 20 minutes, I was nodding off. Watching people making cupcakes ranks high on the boredom scale, alongside being trapped indoors last week thanks to Storm Emma.
Things livened up a bit when the technical challenge was presented to celebrities Harry Hill (I’ve always liked his shows, but as himself I found him oddly creepy), Spandau Ballet and EastEnders star Martin Kemp, comedian Roisin Conaty, and BBC Breakfast host Bill Turnbull. It was to make crêpes Suzette. Without a doubt, pancakes in a rich orange sauce loaded with Grand Marnier would be my death row dessert – I think you should eat something flambéed before suffering the same fate yourself.
Finally, they had to build a tableau from biscuits, and Hill won the whole competition thanks to a beach scene depicting him on holiday with Camilla Parker-Bowles. Then something unexpected happened.
After filming the show, Bill Turnbull himself was diagnosed with incurable prostate cancer that already had spread to his bones. There is no imminent threat of death, but his life will be shortened by maybe 12 years, not the best news for a man who only is 62. His emotional coda to the show, as he spoke to camera about his diagnosis and its effects on him and his family, left a lump in my throat that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Roisin’s pancake batter.
It’s a timely reminder to all of us of an age to call the GP and get checked – as Turnbull said, if he hadn’t left it four years since his last visit to his doctor, the chances of a full recovery were very high. I didn’t learn much about baking, but if all I do is book a PSA test, watching Bake
Off was worth it. Less rewarding was the 90th Annual Academy Awards. The
Oscars show kicked off at 1am on Monday and I stuck with it until the bitter end at 10 to five in the morning; birds were singing by the time I crawled into bed. Hollywood has been through a seismic shift in the last year. It began with the rape allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, and grew into the Me Too, Time’s Up and Never Again movements aimed at ending the sexual harassment and abuse of women in the industry.
Inevitably, the Oscars would provide a platform for women to have their voices, and while that indeed is a noble cause, it made for a very worthy and very dull ceremony.
Host Jimmy Kimmel looked ill at ease during the opening monologue and the entire affair was pretty tortuous. The only time I laughed out loud was when Kimmel introduced Sandra Bullock by saying: ‘Our next presenter was in Speed, Gravity, and Crash. Which also are the three reasons not to get in a plane with Harrison Ford.’ A few hours before the Oscars,
Room To Improve delivered one of its best episodes. The client, Christine, was renovating and enlarging a two-bed terraced house in Clontarf (though others were quick to point out it really was Marino or Fairview), and she had big dreams ripped from the pages of an interiors magazine.
What she wanted for the house appeared to be updated monthly as soon as the latest edition of InStyle hit the doormat, and the build dragged on so long, the sea wall in Clontarf was completed quicker.
Big dreams are all well and good, but there’s a clue in the programme title.
Christine’s dream kitchen island simply couldn’t be shoehorned into the available space, proving conclusively that if you want to improve, you really do have to have room.